


The Shoots and Loops

by guyi (yujael)



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Time Traveler AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2014-03-03
Packaged: 2018-01-05 03:35:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yujael/pseuds/guyi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a prompt on Amari's list: Time traveller: person 1 is a regular person, living life normally, when they meet person 2, a time traveller. person 2 has been stuck in a loop, trying to save the person they love, and have been living the same week for the past 7 years, because no matter what they do, their loved one dies. Person 1 finds out and convinces them to let it be fate and let them die, and move on, and eventually they get together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**0: New Faces, Worn Faces, Intentions A-holding**

 

He rushes up the stairs with heavy smoke in his eyes, his mouth, lungs, everywhere. Gas leak, he heard. Someone downstairs set it off _this_ time. _This_ time is already...

Finally, the right floor. He throws himself to the floor and crawls as fast as he can, because there's more smoke and fire than ever. Fire licks the carpet around him, threatens to blister his skin right off. People, other tenants, told him to stay back, made a futile effort to keep him out the building. Let the firemen get them.

He can't, though. The firemen won't get there in time. 

His phone is dead in his pocket. The last text from Gavin is broken, barely understandable. He can't get out, Ray knows that much. He trapped in his own goddamn apartment, because the jump is too high, the doors are gone. 

But he can get there in time, he can do it _this_ time, _this time._

And it's a stab of anguish just as sharp as the rest when he doesn't. It doesn't dull, not even _this_ time. He manages to break into Gavin's apartment, but when he calls, coughs and tries again and again, he doesn't get a response. He scours what he can see, can reach, doesn't see any movement besides falling debris. How the hell did it get so bad?

Then he sees an arm under the fallen doorway, knows it's his even though it's so badly burned, and he has to swallow down a sob. Again, again...

The pendant is stupidly cold against his chest, even in the surrounding heat. He grabs it from under his collar as there's a great _crack_ from above him. He has to go. Again, because _this_ time is such a horrible failure and he can't – 

The sharp edge of the pendant cuts into his palm as it pulls him. He shuts his eyes tight, but the image is burned into his skull. When he looks at it, he can see the marks on the wood, the marks where Gavin tried to claw himself out and couldn't and ended up – 

And he's in his apartment again, sweating hard in front of the AC on full blast. It's the middle of summer, and for all anyone knows, he could have just spent twenty minutes under the hard sun. 

He hasn't, but Gavin doesn't know that. He calls a few seconds later and calls him a doughnut when Ray tells him that those weird sounds are because he's standing in front of the vent. Ray gives him a laugh, this mechanical thing because he's lost count of how many times Gavin has phoned and called him a doughnut for sitting in the blazing heat.

He leaves the room after the call, and the pendant is colder than ever as he steps into the bathroom and examines the wound on his hand. There's a broken piece of the colourful crystalline pendant stuck in his palm, and he picks it out easily. He's done that accidentally a few times. The shards don't do anything, though. The pendant doesn't lose anything. 

He holds it tight in his hand as he steps into the shower. _This_ time, he breathes. _This_ one...

–

The paramedics are pulling him out and he's fighting them all the way, because they're not supposed to take _him_ first, he's not fucking important enough. Why are they taking him first? Ray turns in their grasp, tries to get his point across – they have to get Gavin out, they have to make sure he's okay, because if he isn't then he's fucked it up _again_ even though he tried so hard _this_ time.

Geoff is already in an ambulance. Michael, the lucky bastard that he is, is the only one without sever injuries and he won't let himself be taken away until he sees – 

And Ray catches his face over a paramedic's shoulder. Michael looks at him, then the other side of the car, and his face crumples. Ray stops fighting – they _finally_ got him out, he isn't being crushed by the ruined door anymore, but instead...

“No,” Ray moans, trying to scrabble across the ground where the men have half way dropped him while more run over with a stretcher. “No, no...”

They take him out of sight, and someone bends down. When they come back up, they're shaking their head. Ray shakes himself loose, crawls over the other side of the wreckage as fast as he can, and it isn't any better. There's blood and glass in his face, his chest, and a frozen expression of pain that isn't ever going to move again.

Again, not _again_.

He runs. As fast as his body will allow him, because he's in shock and doesn't know just how much pain he's actually in yet. The paramedics can't catch him in time, but the cops try to. They follow him down the alleyway, but they don't catch him either. He turns the corner, pendant tight in his fingers, and then he's gone.

And he's in his apartment again, sweating hard in front of the AC on full blast. It's the middle of the summer, and for all anyone knows, he could have just spent twenty minutes under the hard sun.

Gavin calls him a few seconds later, and calls him a doughnut for standing outside at all today, tells him to go take a shower. Ray gives him a laugh, and goes to do just that. The pendant looks mostly intact for now, but he can see a crack running along it. He doesn't pick at it, just lets it hang and leaves it on as he steps under the spray.

 _This_ time. It has to be _this_ one...

–

He hardy even sees it _this_ time, and when he does, a part of him is screaming that it's already too late. They're shopping, they're just looking for a new phone because Gavin's got smashed, but then the door opens so fast that barely anyone even registers the sound of it over the shots fired. 

And it happens fast, one of the quickest, Ray knows that, but by the time he's turned and started to throw himself over the counter that Gavin is on the other side of...

There's a sharp pain in his chest, but it's not just the pain of knowing that he's done it _again_. There's something running down his chest, but it's not nearly as much as Gavin's got.

“Come on, Gav, keep your eyes open, look at me, keep looking at me.” Ray slaps his cheek gently, says everything under his breath and close so that they're not heard, not hurt anymore. Gavin tries to take a breath and talk, but blood gurgles up instead, and the stain on his front gets larger and larger. No, no...

And then he goes right before Ray's eyes. The breath dies in his throat, and his hand goes slack in Ray's. Somebody else is shouting for an ambulance, the police, because the robbers are gone as quickly as they'd come. They're too late, though, everything is already ruined.

Ray lets him go, launches himself away from the eyes of the other shoppers. He catches a glimpse of a man lying on the floor near by who gives him a sharp look, tells him with a gesture to _stay put_ , but Ray keeps going, stumbling into the door marked _Employees Only_. The pendant is cold in his own blood, but it doesn't matter. Not _this_ time.

And he's in his apartment again, sweating hard in front of the AC on full blast. It's the middle of the summer, and for all anyone knows, he could have just spent twenty minutes under the hard sun.

Then Gavin calls, and Ray tells why he's standing in front of the vent, and Gavin calls him a doughnut and tells him to go take a shower. Ray gives him a laugh, and then goes to the washroom. He pulls the pendant from under his shirt, the only thing ever affected by its own power, and he frowns at its dwindled size. 

It's not cracked anymore, because that piece of it has fallen clean off – and not just a shard, either. A piece nearly half the size of his pinky is missing this time, and the remaining edges are sharper than ever. He lets it fall, bounce off his skin. It doesn't matter, because the broken pieces can't do anything. He hasn't lost anything.

Not _this_ time.

 

**1: Let the Flames Begin**

 

There's a new face in the office this week. It's not surprising, because each time is different like that. Some guy chooses this, that or another time to do what he's decided to do. Ray's seen a lot of new faces in the office, some truly unfamiliar to him, others not. This one is vaguely familiar, but he can't tell why. He shrugs it off. He knew there was a guy named Joel who handled their financing and marketing from off premises, though he's never actually met the guy, and Joel just happened to choose _this_ time to finally take the empty office next to Burnie's. So he's not actually that _new_ , just unfamiliar.

Joel goes around the building with Burnie on his tail, meeting up with people he's already met and greeting those he never took the time to. Ray's one of the latter people, and he waves and takes the “honor” of introducing the chucklefucks that sit beside him when Joel comes to visit the AH office, because that's the shit nice guys do. It's better than what Gavin does, which is to completely ignore Joel for two and a half minutes until the Xbox finally reads his game, and then turn to him and say, “You look like a belt and suspenders guy.”

Then Michael smacks him over the back of his head and Gavin grins at Ray. For whatever reason, those two actions always happen, no matter what. Ray's used to it.

What he isn't used to, though, is Joel continuing to stand in the doorway even though he's now familiar with all faces in Achievement Hunter. New guys rarely do that. Actually, they never do that, because Burnie directs them away. Joel is being directed away, but he only goes after he's stared at Ray for a good twenty seconds and said, “I thought you'd be quieter.”

Ray shrugs and spits out he first thing that comes to mind – which he hasn't had to do too much of, either. “People also say that they thought I'd be darker, but, you know.”

Joel shrugs too, even though the sentence isn't finished. That's when he finally follows Burnie out, and Ray turns at the sound of Geoff telling them all to get their asses in gear. Lindsay stands in the middle of the room with her camera, and Ray gives her a thumbs up before grabbing his controller and setting out the win the race again.

–

Joel's in the kitchen when he goes to get lunch the next day. He and Gavin have this cheesy system worked out, alternating the days they go get lunch. They do a lot of small shit like that, actually. It's been a while since they've gotten to indulge in any of them, though. At least in Ray's memory, it has. 

But there's this vaguely familiar face in the kitchen, and the sandwiches that Ray has come to prepare like so many times before can't be made, because Joel has probably skipped breakfast and decided to eat the rest of the sandwich meat now. That's happened a couple times before, so Ray goes to get the peanut butter instead.

“Sorry,” Joel says when he catches the look Ray gives his sandwiches. “I skipped breakfast today.”

And there it is. Ray nods. “Hey, it happens sometimes, right? Late start?”

Joel shakes his head. “Nah, usually I end up missing it anyway. Force of habit at home. Now I'm here. Physical effort has made me hungrier.”

Ray grins. “That's generally what happens.”

Joel returns the gesture and takes a bite of one of his sandwiches. Ray sees his eyes flicker to the cord around his neck. The pendant feels a little heavier. By the time he finishes lunch for him and Gavin, Joel is still leaning against the counter, half way through his first sandwich.

“Not the kind of guy to eat at the computer, huh?” Ray asks. He hasn't seen Joel enough to know much about him.

Joel shakes his head. “I hate dealing with technology, so, well, whatever keeps it running the longest...”

“I hear you,” Ray replies, though he's still going to eat in front of his monitors and the consoles and – at least he's not bringing in an open drink. They have water bottles. “Later, Joel.”

“Yeah, Later.”

–

It's Thursday, and Ray's getting edgy. Something is going to happen soon, he knows it it, and he has to be ready for it. He has two days after this to figure it out, to find some kind of haven. Anything.

And Joel is still that vaguely familiar face that is starting to annoy Ray now, because he can't figure out which time he'd seen him in before. It must have been long, long ago. That's it. The faces from back then are blurry, Joel's is probably one of them. 

The only time that he and Joel cross paths is in the kitchen at lunch. Joel is making his sandwich and coffee, and Ray is making lunch for himself and Gavin. They're alone again this time. They give each other polite nods and then go about their lunches, and it's almost completely quiet until Joel speaks.

“Hey, how old are you, exactly?”

Ray manages to keep a straight face. “Uh... just turned twenty three.”

“Really?” Joel sounds genuinely surprised.

“Yeah,” Ray turns to face him a little. “Don't I look twenty three?”

Joel doesn't answer right away. He looks right into Ray's eyes, doesn't break the contact at all until he shrugs and turns back to the counter. “You just seem older than that.”

“Like... maybe I'm twenty four?”

“No. More like – a bit more than that.” Joel looks like he wants to say something else, but Ray doesn't know what it is. Then he shakes his head and says, “Forget it, it's probably because you're with Gavin. No offense or anything, but...”

Ray nods. “Yeah, I know. I'm practically Gavin's parent in mental years. He's easier at home, honestly.”

“For your sake, I'd hope so,” Joel says dryly. He takes a long sip of coffee and a bite of his sandwich – or something like that, because the next to Ray glances over, there's so little of it left that he does a double take. 

“Did you just...?”

“Yeah, I'll deal with the hiccups later,” Joel makes his way to the doorway with long strides after swallowing the rest of his sandwich. “I have a lot of shit to get done today.”

And then he's gone before Ray can say farewell. He doesn't try to go after him, though. ,He can hear Gavin squawking from the AH office. The words are indistinct, but he knows what's happening. It's either lunch or a brawl between Michael and Gavin and then another hole in the desk. 

He brings the lunch in.

–

“You seem off today,” Joel comments in the kitchen.

“I'm not feeling any different,” Ray replies. There's a tiny bit of terseness in his voice.

“I mean, don't you have this pattern with Gavin?”

Ray looks up from the lettuce he's chopping up. Gavin bought salads for them yesterday, but dropped and ruined them while getting out of Geoff's car. It's happened before. Now he's making new ones while Michael chews Gavin out, effectively off setting the pattern enough for Joel to notice. “Didn't realize you were keeping track of it.”

Joel holds his hands up a bit. “See, that's what I'm talking about. Are you guys fighting about something?”

Ray purses his lips. Joel will never understand. Nobody ever has the _time_ , and he learned a long time ago not to get his hopes up that they will – and even if they did, there would be no reason. Everything's going to be right, _right_ , if he can do it _this_ time. It's Friday, another day, and...

“And now you're doing that.”

“Doing what?”

Joel's eyebrows go up. “Okay, I think I should leave the room right about now.”

Ray sighs. “Look, I'm sorry. I just – yeah, I do kind of have a lot of shit on my plate right now.”

“Are you talking huge proportions of life changing shit, or just normal shit?”

A spark of anger flashes through Ray's body – _that prying son of a_ – and it's gone too quickly for him to be able to discern why it's there in the first place. He pushes it down. Joel doesn't mean any harm. He has to keep it cool. For all anyone knows, nothing is wrong. 

“I don't know. Average shit, I guess. But average shit in the sense that the office kitchen still isn't the place I'm going to discuss it.”

“That's fair,” Joel says lightly. He returns to his coffee. “I'm just trying to figure out if I should be incredibly concerned or not.”

“Or not,” Ray tells him with as much of a smile as he can muster. “Everything's fine in the grand scheme of things, right?”

Joel makes a face. “I hate thinking about the grand scheme of things.”

“Why?”

“Because it's going to end no matter which way you look at it.”

Ray blinks a couple times, has to just stand there and take that in, the way Joel's looking at him, even though his lips aren't moving anymore. Depending on what they define the grand scheme as, everybody knows that it's all going to end. Nothing's forever. Nobody has all the time in the world.

But he does. 

And he won't need forever, anyway. _This_ time, and if it's not, then _next_ time.

–

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Some people are giving them odd looks as they go down the street, hands clasped tightly together, but Ray ignores them in favor of keeping his eyes on their surroundings, and Gavin ignores them in favor of bugging Ray. He'd wanted to stay in today, have Gavin over at his place so they could just watch a movie.

That one rarely works, though, and even if he ever _did_ convince Gavin to come to his apartment, even rarer were the times that he actually...

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. Time is running out, and Ray doesn't know what's going to happen yet. Something always happens, and as the minutes trickle by, his heart beats faster. He makes sure Gavin is walking almost completely down the middle of the sidewalk. Just the right distance from windows and awnings, just the right distance from the road. Shit happens, and Ray's trying to keep it from happening and keep Gavin from knowing at the same time.

He's tried to warn Gavin before. It's never gone well. 

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday – fuck, he doesn't want that to be stuck in his head, but it almost always is. The announcer in his head repeats it again and again, and it makes Ray jumpy whenever a car passes by too quickly.

They're out for a couple hours when they start making their way back to the apartment, a bit of grocery shopping done, when Gavin points across the way and says, “Hey, is that Joel?”

Ray looks, and there he is. Well, he's pretty sure that Joel's there. It's like a scene out of a cheesy spy movie – Joel is standing near a corner store with a newspaper, and he holds it almost comically high. When Ray stares long enough, the paper moves to reveal Joel's entire face as he folds it up and uses it to shade his eyes so he can stare down the street. He must be waiting for someone.

“Let's go talk to him,” Gavin suggests, starting to lean toward the road. 

Ray's grip on his hand tightens involuntarily, and he hisses in Gavin's ear, “Don't just walk out in the middle of the road!”

“I'm not going to get hit by a car or anything,” Gavin replies airily. Ray almost tells him that he could. That he has before. He doesn't get any closer to the road, though, instead heading to the nearest crosswalk. There, he stands on his toes and waves his free arm over his head. “Joel! Hi, Joel!”

Joel turns to them and waves his newspaper, which then drops to his side. He looks a little startled, probably because he doesn't know why the people he hasn't even known for a week are calling to him, but he goes to wait at the opposite corner anyway. Gavin takes long strides over the crosswalk when the signal comes on, and Ray's in the middle of reminding him that he doesn't have long enough legs to keep up without jogging when they get to the other side.

“Is that your idea of taking advantage of the temperature break?” Gavin asks, pointing at the newspaper as they all duck into the shade of the corner store's awning. 

Joel glances at it and shrugs. “Not really. I'm just... You know, I'm not sure what I'm doing today.”

Ray doesn't recall many times like this. He plays it by ear. “Joel Heyman doesn't know what he's doing on a Sunday?”

Joel rolls his eyes a bit. “Hey, I can take breaks too... sometimes.”

“So you don't have to get your phone replaced anymore?” Gavin asks. For a moment, Ray's not sure how Gavin knew that Joel's phone was on the fritz, but then he remembers that Joel sat in on the podcast on Monday. 

“No, decided to get that done Friday. I just – fucking, I don't know, today just seems like the kind of day to do nothing.”

Gavin agrees wholeheartedly, but Ray can't help but think that Joel was probably looking at the stocks before he and Gavin rolled up. 

“We did some shopping,” Gavin says conversationally, holding up one of their bags as proof. “We're going to cook with Geoff later.”

“I've been told that Geoff's a good cook – but please don't tell me they're letting you handle the burners.”

“He's not,” Ray assures him. Gavin laughs. Joel looks over his shoulder, and Ray mimics the motions, wondering why he's still looking all over the place. Nothing's happening that way, or the other. Guess he's just being careful. Maybe he's been inside too long.

“I'll walk for a couple blocks then,” Joel's saying when Ray finally tugs his attention back to the conversation. “With this weather you'll probably want to get home and get the food put away fast before it gets... ugh.”

“Exactly,” Ray agrees, not entirely sure what Joel walking a couple blocks has to do with that. Then Gavin tugs him onward, returning to their journey back home, and Joel joins them. All right. 

“How often do you cook with Geoff?” Joel asks quickly, the first one to fill the silence.

“Every other week, usually,” Gavin replies. “Ever since I got my own apartment.”

Ray opens his mouth to add a bit of his own, but he doesn't get the chance. His first syllable is drowned out by a stranger's scream and a high pitched sound that is more and more familiar with every round. Someone has skidded to a halt too late, another set of tires are skidding across the pavement, and Ray's hand's automatically clenching around Gavin's.

Joel's turning before he is, though, his skinny frame almost falling over with the speed of the motion, and before Ray can figure out where the threat is and where the safety is, Joel's grabbing his arm and tugging him away and Gavin is -

“No!” Ray shouts when Gavin's hand slips out of his. He struggles to get away from Joel because damn it, _damn it_ , he didn't know Joel would grab him, wasn't prepared for it, and now Gavin's losing his balance and stumbling in the wrong direction -

And then he's gone, and in his place is the front end of the four door that has spun out. Ray can see the driver – unconscious with a fucking _bottle_ on the dashboard – and only then can he get away from Joel, who's already pulling his phone from his pocket.

“Ray, wait a second,” Joel calls.

Ray ignores him. He sprints for two seconds down the sidewalk to where Gavin had gotten flung, and the first thing he sees is a can of soup rolling to the curb, a trail of red behind it because it had gone through the steadily growing puddle next to Gavin's head.

“Fuck,” Ray breathes. “ _Fuck!_ ”

Gavin's shoulder is a mess, and his open eyes aren't moving at all. Ray knows he's gone. He turns halfway so that he can see Joel, and he doesn't give a fuck about what expression has settled over his face, but when Joel sees it, his whole body seems to flinch. Ray doesn't care what Joel does after this, for the rest of damn life in this fucked up time, but Ray hopes that this stays with him.

If he hadn't done that, if he hadn't...

Ray gets to his feet, and Joel tries to call him back again. He still ignores it. He runs, shoulder past the gathering crowd and goes down the nearest alley. Joel's voice follows him, even as he's pulling out the pendant.

“Ray, wait!” Joel shouts, getting closer. Fuck him and long long fucking legs and-

“Wait, Ray! Where are you-”

And he's in his apartment again, sweating hard in front of the AC on full blast. It's the middle of the summer, and for all anyone knows, he could have just spent twenty minutes under the hard sun.

Gavin calls soon after, and chuckles when Ray explains that those loud sounds he's hearing are from the AC. He tells Ray to “go take a shower, you doughnut,” and Ray responds with a laugh, an “I'm on it,” and goes to the washroom.

The pendant hasn't changed since last time, and Ray nods tiredly as he strips down and gets into the shower. _This_ time, he promises himself. He was so close, _so_ close. If only Joel hadn't been there, then he could have saved him...

Not _this_ time, though. He knows Joel's type. The chance that he'll make the choice now to move into the office is just as miniscule as it was before. People like him don't make it twice in a row. 

So Ray pushes him from his mind, and the next day, he comes to work with Gavin and Geoff, and he sits down and gets started on the first item of the day: races. His win.

But then they're interrupted by Burnie's knock on the door, and he sees that there's a new face in the office today.

And this time they tell him, “I thought you'd be slower."


	2. Chapter 2

**2: Sing We Now of Heaven and Gold**

“I thought you’d be slower,” Joel tells him this time.

Ray can’t say that he’s never been proven wrong in all this time. He hardly skips a beat – Joel is an odds person, of course he’d be one of the few to make those one in a million chance decisions – and though he can’t say the exact same thing as last time because Joel didn’t either, he can still keep it close.

“Well, you’d also think that I’d be heavier with this job,” Ray says after a short shrug. Joel doesn’t seem to notice anything and Ray relaxes slightly. Very slightly. It’s all fresh today, after all. He continues in as friendly a tone as he can manage, “But as you can see…”

Joel shrugs, too, even though the sentence isn’t finished. He follows Burnie out to continue his grand tour and Ray turns back to his desk, shakes it off and breathes, focuses. Races. His win. Again.

–

Come Tuesday, Ray has pushed the initial negativity from his mind and he focuses on getting through the beginning of this week, to the end of it, and beyond it. He thinks about leaving the city. It’s been a while since they’ve tried to. Maybe they can go all out and go to Canada or something. What the fuck could possibly happen in  _Canada_?

Somewhere in his peripherals a tall person moves about as if they’re repeatedly changing their mind about approaching him. He pretends not to notice, but inside he wonders if Joel will actually make up his fucking mind. This version of him seems jumpier than the last, and that’s really saying something.

But jumpier doesn’t mean different. Just because the worst of it is gone doesn’t mean Ray doesn’t still feel a lingering resentment. A bias stuck in the back of his head.

Because it’s only been two days in his head. It’s never faded fast.

–

Wednesday, Joel finds excuses such as, “I’m bored,” and, “Jack’s so fun to mess with,” to linger in the AH office. He wanders around and talks to everybody and Ray lets Gavin pull him into their X-Ray and Vav personas with him so that they can antagonize Joel when he stays too long. They pretend he’s some criminal mastermind here to steal all their gold until Gavin trips over his own chair and lands awkwardly on his shoulder. Then Joel says something about play time being over and lets them get back to their work.

After making sure Gavin isn’t going to have anything more than a bruise on his shoulder, Ray sits down and pretends to consider the monster let’s play waiting to be edited. When he opens his eyes, his mind is back to the state of clarity that only comes after the last time has faded from a sense of regret to resolve. Something else to add to the list, something else to watch for.

–

Thursday, the edginess is back as well. Joel makes conversation when they end up in the kitchen together and Ray is prepared to follow the script of last time, like he did on Tuesday, but then Joel changes it.

“Are you really twenty three?” he asks. Just a slight change, like Monday. Again, Ray can roll with that.

“Yeah,” he answers, shrugging. He doesn’t take the time to figure out how Joel knows that. “I know, I should be older, right? It’s because of Gavin, though.”

“That’s some real juxtaposition there.” Joel trails off and stares blankly at his coffee mug for long enough that Ray wonders what the point of him even opening his mouth was. “He’s better at home, isn’t he? For your sake, I hope he is.”

“He is,” Ray assures him. He keeps one eye on Joel and actually catches the gigantic bite that he takes out of his sandwich.

“Listen, I was wondering,” Joel says slowly, sipping his coffee. The way he moves his arm and holds his mug is familiar to Ray. It’s the kind of movement only made when somebody can’t stand being totally still.

“Wondering about what?”

Joel opens his mouth, but then his phone beeps from the pocket of his hoodie. He apologizes quickly and pulls his phone out to read the text he received. “Never mind,” he sighs, apparently dismayed as he downs the rest of his food. “I gotta go talk to Gus. Sorry.”

“Well, whenever you have the chance,” Ray says, more out of obligation than anything.

–

The chance comes the next morning, when Joel arrives at the same time as Geoff, Gavin and Ray do, when he gets out of his car at the same time Gavin gets out of Geoff’s and manages to lean back and reach out to save the bag that flies out of Gavin’s hand when he stumbles.

“Nice save, man,” Geoff says as Joel hands the bag of lunch food back to Gavin, appreciative of the fact that a mess wasn’t made in the parking lot.

“No problem,” Joel says, matching his pace to theirs as they head for the building. He holds the front door open and Ray, the last to enter, stops in the foyer.

“Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?” he asks. “From yesterday?”

Joel seems confused briefly, but he shakes it off and answers fast. “Oh, it wasn’t anything important. I was just wondering if anybody knew the price checks of new phones, since I need to get mine replaced… It’s fine,” he adds as an afterthought, “I talked to Gus.”

“All right, then.” Ray shrugs and heads to the AH door. Something feels off – not quite wrong, but still off – but now that he’s in the office and Joel seems to have disappeared already, he doesn’t find it in him to go chasing after it. Whatever it even is.

He doesn’t see Joel for the rest of the day.

–

And “it” doesn’t come back until Sunday, Sunday, Sunday…

–

It doesn’t come back until Sunday morning passes uneventful, after Geoff invites them over, until the afternoon drifts by quietly and Ray’s heart starts to beat faster, because maybe  _this_  will be the one.  _This_ time. Finally.

The sun falls steadily as night approaches. Geoff offers to give them a ride to one of their apartments and when he drives away after dropping them off, Ray is more jittery than ever before. Almost there, almost _-_

“I need some air before bed,” Gavin says. He fights off a yawn, eyes on the street outside the lobby. “I don’t wanna be too hungover tomorrow.”

“How far are you going?” Ray asks, walking backwards as Gavin saunters back to the door. His mind is reeling through the possibilities – so many as compared to the amount waiting inside alone. Especially since Gavin is tipsy.

“Just a couple streets over, you don’t have to come.”

“Hey, somebody has to make sure you don’t get your drunk ass into trouble,” Ray says, following Gavin outside and taking hold of his hand. He tries to calculate the lowest amount of time that he can let Gavin stay out before his nerves get the better of him. Two corners at most, which is hardly more than five minutes, even at the pace Gavin moves at.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday; the day is almost over. The sun has been down for almost an hour and all they have to do – Ray almost laughs – all they have to do  _this_  time is avoid every piece of shady pavement and pray to fucking God that a fire doesn’t start in the middle of the goddamn night. It hasn’t been Sunday night for so long and he’s going to keep his fingers curled around Gavin’s until Monday morning.

So he thinks before he realizes that there are people hiding out in the alley for some poor idiot to walk by on a Sunday night. Or two guys holding hands. Probably doesn’t matter to the muggers.

“They look like they’ve been having fun,” one man says, standing in front of Ray and Gavin while another creeps around behind them. Ray can’t tell if either of them have had anything to drink or not. “Think they’ve got anything left to share?”

“We don’t,” Gavin replies. He tugs his fingers away from Ray’s and Ray only lets him because he knows that the fact that they’re together is painting a pretty big target on their backs. “We’re going home, just leave us alone.”

“You know, I think he’s lying,” says the second guy. Ray looks over his shoulder in time to see the glint of metal in his hand slip out from under his sleeve.

“He’s not,” Ray says. He shifts his stance – fucking New York, which isn’t even saying anything about what he’s picked up from all the other times similar to this. “Look, we don’t want any trouble.”

“Neither do I,” the first guy agrees. “Let’s just make it easy.”

Ray opens his mouth to say, “So fuck off then,” but then the man behind them reaches for Gavin and Ray acts on impulse, almost on memory. He snaps, “Get down, Gav!” before he lunges and brings his fist up under the man’s jaw.

The guy grunts and drops his knife. Ray picks it up and turns – only to reel back with the force of the punch from the first one. The knife goes back to its owner, who immediately turns his attention to Gavin, who’s only gone about fifteen feet from the alley.

“Fucking go, Gavin!” Ray shouts as he fights off the unarmed mugger. He curses when the man goes down and Gavin comes back in his direction, trying to run around the one with the knife. Damn it,  _damn it._

Ray leaps, trying to make it in time to shove Gavin to the ground and out of the knife’s range, back into the light where someone might actually see what’s happening. Gavin skids to a halt, realizing his mistake, and that second of pause gives the mugger more ground. Gives him the advantage, puts him in the perfect position to swing before Ray can reach him.

But even though he swings, he doesn’t even graze Gavin before something else – nope,  _someone_  else barrels into him and brings him to the ground. Ray freezes and he and Gavin only watch as the newcomer gets to his feet with a pained groan and staggers back.

“Are you okay?” Joel asks, clutching his stomach.

“Okay?” Gavin sputters, pointing at the color between Joel’s fingers. “Bloody hell – you just got stabbed, Joel, don’t ask me if I’m-”

Ray doesn’t hear anymore over the ringing and pain in his head. Fuck, he hisses as he hits the ground. The other guy wasn’t down. The other guy’s still-

“No!” Joel shouts, moving as though he actually intends to try and fight off the mugger with a knife wound.

Ray doesn’t see what happens then. Joel moves out of his sight and he’s too stunned to move fast enough, to move his head far enough to see how it goes down. So close. They were so close…

When he finally gets to his knees, the muggers are running, Joel is making an odd wheezing sound and Gavin is sliding down to the ground against a wall. Ray stands and stumbles, his vision swimming.

“Damn it,” he hisses as he sinks down in front of Gavin. He presses his hands over Gavin’s, tries to stem the blood flow a little more. “Just breathe, Gav. Where’s your phone?”

“Pocket,” Gavin stammers. “Pock-”

“Be quiet.” Ray searches Gavin’s pockets with shaking hands. He can still do this, can still save this.

“We need ambulances,” Joel says. Ray looks over his shoulder to see that Joel already has his phone out. He’s slumped on the ground now, red slowly spreading over the sidewalk from between his fingers. How bad did he get hit? His lips move again, but Ray doesn’t catch what he says.

He’s dying too. Because this time he tried to…

“Ray,” Gavin whispers. He leaves his wounds uncovered as he scrabbles for a slippery grip on Ray’s hands. “I don’t wanna-”

“Don’t waste your breath,” Ray tells him quickly, pressing Gavin’s hands back down and bunching his sweater up around the wounds. “We just have to wait for the ambulances, you’re gonna be okay.”

They’re so close, so close…

“My fault, innit?” Gavin mutters. He coughs and rests his forehead against Ray’s. “Wanted some air, now I can’t br-”

“Damn it, Gav, will you stop that?”

“Sorry.”

“Ray.” Joel moves on his hands and knees and sits a few feet away. “They’re on their way.”

Ray nods jerkily. A couple cars pass by, but they’re in the shadows and they probably just look like a few hobos on the side of the road. Should have called for help, he thinks dumbly.

“Sorry,” Gavin says again. Ray hardly even hears him. “Really sorry.”

“Stop  _apologizing_ ,” Ray urges.

Gavin smiles at him.  _Sorry_ , he says, because it only took two minutes for him to realize and accept that he’s fucking bleeding to death. He closes his eyes.

“No, don’t.” Ray slaps his cheek lightly. “Come on, Gavin, keep your eyes open, just… Fuck.” His head drops to Gavin’s shoulders. “ _Fuck!_ ”

Joel reaches for him as he stands. “Ray, listen…”

He can’t. He almost had it  _this_ time, but now it’s finished and now Joel’s dying, too.

“Not again,” Joel breathes. “Damn it, will you just wait a second?”

Ray whips around, his hand already clutching the pendant under his shirt. Joel makes an attempt to stand, but doesn’t get more than a foot off the ground. Again, he said. Jesus Christ.

“I’m sorry,” Ray tells him, shaking his head. “I can’t, I’m sorry.”

“Wait-”

And he’s in his apartment again, sweating hard in front of the AC on full blast. It’s the middle of the summer, and for all anyone knows, he could have just spent twenty minutes under the hard sun. The throbbing in his head fades to a dull sensation in his memory. When he gets to the shower after Gavin calls, his mind is still reeling and the first thing he does is pull off the pendant and hold it up to the light.

No new cracks have formed since last time, but that smooth side where a chunk half the size of his little finger had fallen off practically screams at him.  _Not again,_  he’d said. Again, again – how the fuck did he even figure out how to work it? Did he survive long enough to get back?

He had to have. Ray stands under the hot water and breathes, repeating it in his head like a mantra. He knows Joel’s type. He’s not going to drop something unless it has anything to do with technology, and this is about as far from technology as it gets. He has to have come back.

Otherwise, the ball of regret low in his chest won’t ever go away. Not this time.

–

Monday morning. Call from Gavin, carpool with Geoff. Sneaky question to Geoff, but if Geoff knows anything about any rearrangements in the office, he’s keeping it a surprise. Sit in the office for ten minutes, listen close for a commotion in the foyer. Nothing.

Nothing.

Ray purses his lips and holds his controller tightly as they line up for the races. They aren’t interrupted once. When Lindsay points her camera at him as he passes the finish line, he pretends that there’s nothing on his mind except for the fact that he just ground all their asses into the digital pavement.

Still nothing. Fuck.

Geoff and Jack get out of their chairs and gather their notes while Michael helps set up the camera for AHWU. They begin recording and it only takes five minutes for them to reach the point where they all start screaming about a bad joke about one of the recent releases. Ray opens his mouth to keep up appearances, but it isn’t his voice that joins the din.

Burnie pokes his head into the room and shouts, “Oh, we’re screaming, we’re screaming, what are we screaming at?”

And behind him, a familiar voice echoes him. “Why are we screaming?”

“Fucking got ‘em!” is the only reply they get from Michael. Then the noise dies down and Burnie tugs Joel into the room.

“Hey, Internet,” he says, pointing at Joel. “Look, I got a new servant.”

Joel waves at the camera before turning his attention elsewhere. Ray doesn’t miss the multiple glances in his direction. The weight on his chest lessens significantly and he can finally fucking breathe right. He waves with Gavin when Burnie and Joel leave to continue their tour, and then practically falls back in his chair. That’s why Joel was familiar. Let him be stuck down by lighting if that isn’t the same Joel as last time – and the time before that, and maybe even a time or two before _that_.

Fuck.

–

Monday is Gavin’s day for lunch, so Ray can’t use that excuse. Instead, he says “bathroom break” and tries to look as nonchalant as possible as he heads upstairs. The office next to Burnie’s isn’t empty anymore and Joel doesn’t ask or even look confused when Ray finds him and shuts the door behind him.

“You,” Ray says, pointing.

Joel glances down at himself. “Yeah, me.”

“You – you-” Ray can’t get anything else out, so he acts instead. He crosses the small room in two steps and pulls the bottom of Joel’s shirt up, revealing pale, clean skin. Not a scratch, not a scar, nothing.

“You’ve done this more than me, I think,” Joel says. “So you’re already used to this, aren’t you?”

Ray lets go of Joel’s shirt and steps away. “Yeah, but I’m not exactly used to seeing someone else doing it. I didn’t know for sure if it… worked the same way.”

“Well, maybe if you would actually wait for once,” Joel retorts. “I mean jeez, nice to know you’re willing to let a guy bleed out on the street.”

Ray winces inwardly. “It’s not like  _that_. I – you weren’t my priority.”

“That kind of  _is_  what it means.”

Ray exhales slowly between his teeth and sinks down in Joel’s chair. He runs both hands down his face and then holds them over his eyes for a moment. “If it makes you feel any better, I was going to regret it.”

“Regret it?”

“I was gonna regret it, because I’m an idiot. I’m a fucking idiot and I only realized what you did yesterday, and I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to get to talk to you again.  _You_  you, I mean. And then you were  _late_ this time, so I thought…”

“You thought I wasn’t coming back,” Joel finishes. Ray nods, face still covered. A few seconds pass before Joel asks slowly, “Ray, how many times have you done this?”

At first, Ray’s mind is a wasteland. How many times? How many? He can’t count the images when they come. Can’t count the fires and the shots and the cars and the beams and all the stupid, stupid things that shouldn’t have killed a person but did anyway. He lets his hands slide away from his eyes so that he can meet Joel’s.

“You’re going to have to let me get back to you on that one.”

The only expression that can be called similar to the one on Joel’s face then is terror.

–

In the kitchen the next day, Joel asks him quietly, “What have you been doing this whole time?”

“What does it look like?”

Joel pauses. “That’s why you seem so much older.”

“What have  _you_  been doing?” Ray counts back in his head to the time his pendant broke. “How many times have you-”

“Four,” Joel answers quickly. “Two to figure out what the fuck happened and track you down, and then two again, because… yeah.”

He check over his shoulder before reaching into his pocket. In the palm of his hand is a small stone, slightly opaque and tinged with gold and pink where Ray’s has the whole spectrum of colors. Joel’s is only a fragment, though.

“You dropped this after that place was shot up,” Joel explains. “I didn’t know what it was until it just… I ended up – Jesus fuck-”

“I know,” Ray says, nodding. The sensation of ending back in the exact same spot he was a week ago doesn’t affect him anymore, hasn’t for a long time, but he can only imagine what Joel thought of it. “It’s… weird. It’s fucking insane. But it… it’s the only…”

“How long have you been doing this?” Joel asks again, softer. He slips the stone back in his pocket.

Ray shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

–

Ray doesn’t know on Wednesday, either.

–

On Friday, he thinks he has an estimate. It’s a trying process, but he wants to figure it out. He calls it all up, even the bad ones, because he’s convinced himself that the more he can tell Joel, the more Joel can help him. Make it a two man job and not fuck it up this time. Not have two people dead.

“Why don’t you come by my place tomorrow?” Joel suggests in the kitchen. Ray has the feeling he didn’t try to prevent Gavin’s lunch from ending up on the pavement just so that they’d have this five minutes to talk. “We can discuss it. I mean, I actually want to  _discuss_  this, because I still don’t know half of what’s going on. All I know is that you’re trying to save him. And that it hasn’t been going so well.”

Ray tenses up briefly. It’s the truth, he tells himself. Relax. “I haven’t made any plans yet. How far do you live from here?”

“Text me your address, I’ll come pick you up. It’ll be a bit of a trek from your place, otherwise.” Joel finishes off his food and gives Ray a careful look. “By the way, I’m sorry for before. Er –  _before_  before. I tried to help-”

“I know.” Ray smiles. “I got that. Just promise me that you’re not going to try to make up for it by getting yourself stabbed again, okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

–

Saturday morning, Ray remembers to send Joel his address before he sits down in his living room to play GTA with Gavin. They play until lunch, like always, until Gavin says that he’s going out with the Ramsey family. He offers to have Geoff come pick him up, too, but this is one of the rare times that Ray refuses.

 _But don’t worry_ , he says to Gavin.  _Tomorrow is still definitely a yes._

An hour later, Joel texts him:  _on my way_. Ray makes sure he’s got a light jacket for the wind, just in case, and goes outside to wait. Joel pulls up ten minutes later and Ray gets in the passenger seat. They make a sorry attempt at conversation on the way, but the car isn’t really Ray’s ideal “heavy discussion” setting and it’s probably not Joel’s either.

Another ten minutes later, Joel pulls into the driveway of a small, neat looking house. It’s not the place anyone would go looking for a time traveler, but Ray isn’t one to talk.

“I’m still in the middle of making lunch,” Joel says as they get out of the car. “Hope you don’t mind if I cook at the same time.”

“We’re making this a lunch date now?” Ray asks humorlessly as he and Joel step inside. The house is cool, but not cool enough that he would want to keep his jacket on. He hangs it up next to the door.

“If you want, sure,” Joel replies easily. “Purely professional, of course. I’m making stew. You can sit down if you want.”

Joel’s kitchen is an actual kitchen as compared to Ray’s, complete with an island counter and everything. The counter next to the sink has a cutting board and an array of vegetables waiting to be chopped, and there’s a pot in the sink. Ray sits down at the table against the wall opposite the sink and Joel pulls a couple sodas out of his fridge. Ray takes one and Joel steps back to lean on the island.

“So, have you figured it out?” he asks. He sips his drink before asking again, “How many times have you done this?”

Ray takes a gulp of Dr. Pepper more out of obligation than anything else. He’s not sure where to actually start, so he ends up tapping his fingers against the metal can for a moment before he decides to just jump and hit the ground running.

No matter where he begins, the story is the same. How much worse can it get?

He starts with the clearest one, because it started everything. “The first ones were the worst, because I had no fucking clue what I was doing or how I was supposed to do it.”

But he fucking tried anyway, because once he started figuring things out, picking things up from one time to another, he became that much more determined. He knew what to watch for, how to get around some of them, even though it always turned out that he’d dodged a bullet and fallen right into a knife. Out of the frying pan and onto the goddamn road.

He tells Joel that the necklace was something that Gavin had found back in England, kind of like the Team Nice Dynamite necklaces. It didn’t do anything at first. It was silly, pretty trinket. But after Gavin had been struck down with a blow to the head one night, Ray had held onto it like a drowning man to a buoy and it had reacted. He wanted to go back and make things right, actually  _be_  there to keep Gavin out of trouble, and that’s what it did.

It brought him back, gave him a week. And he fucked it up. He fucked it up again, again, again, and again. All he wants is for Gavin to be  _alive_ , he wants them to be happy again, but he still hasn’t gotten it right.

He tells Joel about a few of them. The ones that nobody would see coming – falling awning, things dropping from great heights, electricity – and even though Joel’s face seems to pale continuously, he doesn’t ask Ray to stop.

No, he’s quiet to the end. Ray pauses to collect his thoughts and when he finally gets around to answering Joel’s question, his voice is shaking.

“I stopped trying to count a long time ago,” he says. “I gave up on that. The numbers were gone, but you know what wasn’t? His fucking face every time I couldn’t stop it. I remember  _all_ of them and I have had nightmares about them. I am not shitting you here, because if I were then this would be the biggest lie in the entire fucking world. Joel, I have gone back over and over again and I’ve never aged, never taken an injury back with me, but I’m not twenty three anymore. I’ve spent – it’s been  _years_ , Joel. It’s been  _seven years_.”

Joel might as well be a marble statue for all the signs of life he gives then. Ray doesn’t break eye contact, but he’s sure that at least five minutes go by before Joel so much as blinks.

He blinks, then his eyes break away from Ray’s. He lowers his arm slowly and sets the can down on the counter beside him. And then he turns, walks around the island, picks up the knife next to his cutting board and slides a carrot in front of him. He does it all without a word.

“What…” Ray has to blink a few times, just make sure that his eyes are taking in the right image. “What are you doing?”

Joel doesn’t turn around. The slices he makes are even and precise. “What does it look like?”

“But I just – I just told you everything! I told you  _everything_ , what I’ve been doing, how I knew all that shit was going to fucking happen, all the things that happened and the amount of times that he – and I – you’re not… you’re not freaking out at all?”

Maybe the full effect hasn’t hit him yet. He can’t possibly be so calm when Ray is fighting to keep himself still.

“None of that was lost on me, you can be sure of that. Trust me, it’ll come around. Just give it a minute.”

Joel slides the carrot chunks into the pot in the sink and pulls over another one. He cuts that one up too without a word, back to Ray and head down. Ray doesn’t speak either. He sits in his chair, staring at his hands in his lap and the can on the table, and the slow sounds of the knife cutting through the carrot and hitting the board go uninterrupted. After what he thinks is more than two or three minutes, the sounds are still coming and he doesn’t realize that they’ve stopped until–

“Jesus fucking Christ – seven years!” Joel exclaims, slamming his palms down on the counter and nearly sending Ray onto the floor in shock. “Are you fucking – you are, you’re insane! You are a maniac!”

“So is it coming around now?” Ray asks hesitantly, hand gripping the table like iron.

Joel whips around, the knife still in his hand. “Yes, it is! I just – I can’t – I actually cannot even comprehend how–”

“I’m trying my best to explain it to you!”

“That in itself is even more proof!”

Ray is about to ask him what more he can fucking say to make it any clearer, but then he stops mid breath. He frowns at Joel, who is looking back at him with an expression of such incredulity that he almost looks like a different person, like he’s not actually the Joel that went back in time four times. “What?”

“Thank about it for a second here, Ray,” Joel says quickly. He leans closer, making pointed gestures with the knife with every stressed word. “This is the  _same_  week, the  _same_  seven days, that you’ve been living for  _seven years_. This has gone through more than three hundred and fifty –  _sixty_! – times! You’ve literally seen how this is going to pan out dozens of times, you  _know_  it’s not going to work, but you do it anyway and you are trying to defend that?”

“Don’t say that.” Ray stands up, but Joel is still taller, not threatened at all. “Don’t say it like that, not about him. He’s not worthless.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“But you’re implying it, and I know you are, because you don’t fucking understand, Joel.”

“What the hell makes you think I don’t understand? I know what it’s like, Ray, to love somebody and I know what it’s like to lose them. And you know what? Shit fucking happens, Ray! Shit happens and no matter what you do, there are going to be times where you can’t do a single fucking thing about it, and you need to _move on_.”

“I can’t!”

Ray doesn’t know what possesses him to punch Joel – because Joel still has the goddamn knife and if there’s one other person Ray doesn’t actually want to beat the crap out of, it’s him – but he does it anyway. Joel doesn’t even try to block it. He stumbles back and bounces off the island counter, goes down and knocks into the counter next to the sink. He doesn’t come back up or reach for the knife that went spinning across the linoleum.

“You have no idea what it’s really like!” Ray shouts at him. His fist is shaking. “This is all I have left – I can’t go back to what it was anymore! I have to fix it, because if I can’t, then nothing – nothing will make any goddamn sense anymore!”

Joel just shakes his head. The look he gives Ray from the floor is almost like a crushing disappointment. It twists in Ray’s gut like a blade.

“It doesn’t matter what you do,” Ray tells him, has to grind the words out from between his teeth. “I have to fix this, and if I can’t do it this time, then I have try again.”

He turns around and leaves the room as fast as he can without actually running. He tears his jacket from the hook next to the door, blood pounding in his ears as he steps out into the wind, lets it slam the door behind him. He’s running out of time. Joel drove them half way across the city from his apartment, but he knows he can still make it back to Gavin without it looking off.

Once he turns a corner, gets out of sight of Joel’s house, he starts running, doesn’t pay any mind to the wind or the fact that he almost runs right out in front of a moving car. Joel’s reaction lit a spark in him, one he’d pushed down a long time ago, and he’s fighting to put it out again.

So what if Joel doesn’t want to help him? He still has to finish this and he’s running out of time to do it.

–

And even when he hardly has the strength to reach for the pendant, he has to try again, because, truthfully, he has all the time in the world.


	3. Chapter 3

**3: Standing at Such Great Heights, the Bottom of the World**

 

The office sees a new face on Monday again. Nobody's busy when Burnie barges into the room, so Geoff is the one to introduce his employees this time around. Joel goes through the same polite motions that he did before and all he gives Ray is a pointed look, the meaning unmistakeable.

Ray wants to ignore it. As far as he can tell, Joel had absolutely no reason to come back. And that's why Ray lets out a silent sigh after lunch, gets out of his chair and says, “Bathroom break,” on his way out the door.

Joel's leaning back in his chair, tapping a pen against his chin with one hand and tapping his free fingers against the arm of the chair. He doesn't have to tell Ray to shut the door behind him.

“Missed you yesterday,” Ray says, leaning against the wall next to the door. “So I'm kind of confused. Why did you come back?”

“I wanted to help,” Joel says, resting the pen on his chin.

“Oh, well, you did a great fucking job yesterday – mind if I keep calling it yesterday?”

Joel closes his eyes for a couple seconds. “Okay. I know you're a little made at me-”

“Just a little. I actually thought you were-” Ray pretends to smack himself in the face, because that's what fools do. “I thought you could help me.”

“That's what I said. I – did you listen to yourself, Ray?” Joel drops the pen and leans forward. “Like, have you actually _thought_ about what you said? Because I have.”

“I know what I said. Apparently it was the wrong thing to say.”

Joel shakes his head. “No, it wasn't, it... Listen, Ray. Anybody who says that you don't love Gavin is obviously an ignorant little motherfucker. But when you told me – God, this is _so_ not the place to say this, but I'm gonna do it anyway.” Joel looks up at Ray and doesn't blink once. “I wanted to help you – you _and_ Gavin. But you know what changed my mind from that? What you're doing isn't love, Ray. It's an obsession.”

Ray pulls away from the wall, narrowing his eyes at Joel. “Well, you're right about one thing. What the hell makes you think you can say that, though?”

“I know what I'm talking about what I say obsession,” Joel says. He gestures at his computer screen. “I mean – never mind. I understand going back a few times, maybe a dozen at most, but this? This is beyond – this is bad, Ray. It's bad. If it gets any worse, you're going to fucking lose it and I don't think you want that to happen.”

Ray crosses his arms over his chest, hiding his fists under his sleeves. “I don't think you know what you're talking about. You're telling me to just _let_ him _die_ , Joel. You're practically telling me to kill him.”

Joel groans and runs his hands over his face. “No, that's not it at all! I'm not trying to hurt anybody, Ray! It's just that sometimes... Sometimes things are absolute. Sometimes you just need to let them happen.”

“Let them happen?” Ray deadpans. “Let all that happen to him? Joel, I – no. It isn't absolute. I have a _chance_ here.”

Joel shakes his head slowly. “Ray, you are – Jesus Christ, you are stubborn, I'll give you that.”

“If that's all you're going to give me,” Ray points to the door. “I kind of have work that I need to get done.”

Joel closes his eyes slowly, sighs. “This isn't over.”

“Sounds over to me,” Ray says as he opens the door. If Joel replies, his voice is too quiet to hear over the sounds of the rest of the office.

–

It's over until after work, when Ray is sitting down in his apartment to eat dinner and his phone vibrates on his desk. He frowns at the _Unknown_ on the screen. It's only after he presses _talk_ that he remembers that the number calling is Joel's.

“You remembered my phone number?”

“Of course I did,” Joel says. “Not that I was expecting to have to call you like this, but still.”

“Why _are_ you calling?”

“That's a stupid question. Ray, hear me out here-”

Ray doesn't want to hear him out. Luckily, he has an excuse on a plate in front of him. “You called in the middle of dinner.”

“You picked up,” Joel retorts.

“Is _anything_ you're about to say to me any different than before?” Ray asks, stabbing his food with his fork.

“I don't have anything to say that I haven't already said,” Joel replies after a couple seconds. “I could try to mix it up a little, but my point is still the same.”

“I don't see why you've called, then.” Ray moves his phone away from his ear, but Joel's voice is loud enough to be heard even from a distance.

“Because apparently you need to have a go at it multiple times!” Joel exclaims. “And the thing is, I can't really blame you for that part, because that's the kind of shit that happens when you dig a hole for yourself and sit in it for way longer than you should!”

“Oh, well I'm _sorry_ , Joel,” Ray puts his phone back to his ear, “if I'm trying to save a life. If I'm trying to save someone I love.”

“Are you okay, Ray?”

Ray takes a breath for another comeback, but then he pauses. What did he say?

“Are you, honest to God, swear on the fucking Bible or every console you've ever owned, okay?” Joel repeats. When he doesn't get an answer, he continues. “Aren't you tired? Are you happy?”

“No-”

“When's the last time you got a full night's sleep? How often do you wonder if maybe it isn't Sunday anymore and-”

“Stop it, Joel,” Ray hisses. “Stop it with the fucking psychological bullshit.”

“I'm not doing anything,” Joel says innocently, “except trying to get you to think. _Really_ think.”

“You shouldn't have come back,” Ray says on impulse. “If you're not going to help, you should have come back.”

Joel sighs and starts to say something, but Ray hangs up before he gets to the second syllable. He turns his phone off, just in case Joel doesn't get the message, and then stares at the plate of mac and cheese in front of him.

Mac and cheese is so old, he thinks. So old.

He turns his phone on a few minutes later and calls Gavin while he eats.

–

When Ray goes into the kitchen on Tuesday to make his and Gavin's sandwiches, Joel isn't there. There's no sign that he got there before Ray, either. A part of him wants to relax, but instead he gets himself stuck between trying to do that and running his arguments with Joel over in his head. Thinking.

He stops that when he gets back in the office and he and Gavin commandeer Ryan's couch in his absence, ignoring the muttered commentary from Michael and the “aw” from Geoff and Jack.

–

Much to Ray's chagrin, Joel's disappearance on Tuesday actually means next to nothing.

“Don't hang up on me this time,” Joel warns when he calls Wednesday evening. Ray regrets letting Gavin hole himself up with Geoff to do a let's build.

“What does it matter?” Ray sighs. “Unless you decided to change your mind?”

“Did you?”

“No. Seriously, Joel, what does it matter to you? You don't strike me as the kind of person to try so hard for something like this.”

“First of all, as annoying as he is, I like Gavin.”

You _asshole_ , that makes absolutely _no sense!_ “Then why won't you help me save his goddamn life?”

The line is dead silent at first, then a muffled groan. “Because I – I think – I like to think I have a couple of good morals,” is Joel's strained reply. “Sorry if I don't think it's right for a twenty-three going on thirty-one year old to be going back in time a few hundred times whenever life doesn't work out for them.”

“So now I'm wrong?” Ray snarls. He actually wishes Joel were here so that he'd have something to glare at besides his television.

“You're acting like a child, to be frank,” Joel deadpans. “Not that I'm trying to destroy you or anything, but I gotta say it.”

Ray closes his eyes and pushes his glasses up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “That's not what this is about, Joel. This is about Gavin-”

“No,” Joel cuts in. “No, it's about both of you. You said you had a chance to fix something with that necklace and you know what? I think I do, too. For once, I have the chance to tell someone when it's time to move on. And it is. It is beyond time.”

Ray shakes his head, forgetting for a moment that he is alone. “No,” he says. His voice cracks. “Joel, I am not giving up on him.”

Joel is quiet. Ray convinces himself to stay on the line until he's sure that Joel has hung up.

“All right.” Joel exhales slowly. “All right. Have a good night, Ray.”

The line clicks and dies. Ray sets his phone down on his desk and walks in circles a few times around his living room. That wasn't the sound of someone giving up for good. That was someone deciding to go to bed early before pulling out the big guns.

Well, if it's going to be anything like the last three days, two can play at that game.

–

After lunch, Ray sits on Ryan's couch again and Gavin sort of sprawls himself over it and Ray. There's a lull in activity in the office as people finish their morning work, eat and get ready for the end of the week long haul, and they're taking advantage of the temporary quiet.

“We should take a nap,” Gavin says into Ray's leg.

“Geoff's gonna be back in like,” Ray glances at his phone, “thirty minutes. We got maybe fifteen before everyone else gets back.”

“Yeah, but we don't have to be filming for another hour. And, they say the best length of a nap is less than thirty minutes.” Gavin shifts so that he can use Ray's lap as a pillow. “Come on, you've been tired all day, admit it.”

“That obvious?” Ray chuckles a bit and slumps further down so that Gavin's head ends up on his stomach. “Okay. Last one to fall asleep does lunch tomorrow.”

“No fair,” Gavin mutters. He makes himself more comfortable and Ray lets him use one of his arms as a blanket. “I'll just get Geoff to make the best salad ever. Or buy it.”

Ray only pretends to be asleep at first, but the warmth of the office and Gavin's body combined with the muted sounds in and outside of the room are enough to drag him down. He doesn't even notice it until he's being shaken awake by Ryan.

Ryan apologizes while Ray stretches and yawns. “Nap days are Monday and Wednesday only,” he says.

Ray prods Gavin in the shoulder. Gavin groans unintelligibly and wraps his arms around Ray's middle, sparing a glance and a tiny nod to Ryan to let him know that he actually is getting up eventually. “Come on, time to get up,” Ray says. “Let go.”

“Letting go,” Gavin replies. They stand up and stretch on their way to their own chairs and Gavin thanks Ryan for leaving his couch long enough for their nap before plopping down in his own chair.

“Quality time management,” Ray adds. He holds his arms above his head for a few seconds, and that's when he notices that the weight of the pendant against his chest is missing. He looks back at the couch, his fingers skittering over his neck and chest, but the necklace isn't in any of those places.

Don't panic, he thinks. He already has a good idea of what happened. Just to be sure, he asks Gavin if he's seen the stone anywhere. Gavin suggests that it slipped off without him realizing. Considering it had “already broken”, he doesn't seem surprised to hear it's lost now. Ray laughs along at Michael's joke about cheap foreign nick knacks.

Ray knows, though. It's in the office. In somebody's pocket, likely.

–

He passes Joel on the way out of the office with Gavin and Geoff, but doesn't have the time to say anything. The fleeting expression on Joel's face is enough, though.

Son of a bitch. If that's how he's going to play it, fine. It's the end of the week anyhow.

–

He doesn't remember the street name, but Ray remembers all the turns that Joel took from his apartment. It takes almost half an hour to get there on foot, at which point there's a painful stitch in his side, but he ignores it as he crosses Joel's lawn and pounds on his front door.

“Joel! Open the door, Joel!”

Joel opens the door. His body language says it all.

“Really, Joel?” Ray steps inside and Joel closes the door behind him. “Really?”

“There's only so much I can convey over the phone,” Joel explains. “And there aren't a whole lot of places that I can talk to you face to face without being disturbed.”

“Where is it?”

“Here.” Joel wanders into his kitchen and heads over to the counter. The pendant is lying next to the sink until he tosses it back to Ray.

“What, no terms and conditions?”

Joel shrugs, shakes his head. “You can walk out right now if you want. I just – hear me out, Ray, because you know what? This is the last time I'm gonna try.”

“Is it?”

“Yeah. If you are _that_ determined, then either I'm just really bad at this, or that thing broke about two hundred uses too late.”

Ray stays in the doorway, slipping the pendant back over his head. “If it was too late, we wouldn't be standing here.”

“Well, that would depend on what 'too late' means to you,” Joel points out. “Because maybe I'm wrong and Gavin could have been saved a really long time ago, or maybe you would have already accepted that – as much as I hate this word – it's fate. Gavin's death is-”

“ _Fate_?” Ray repeats. “This isn't a goddamn game.”

“I know that, but how else do you want me to say it? I don't know how else to explain it.” Joel points at the pendant. “Except – has it never occurred to you that maybe that isn't sending you back every week to give you another chance?”

“Why the hell else would you travel back in time then?” Ray asks, almost shouting.

“Because maybe that's what it takes to send the fucking _message_!” Joel exclaims, raising his voice. “And maybe whoever created it didn't think that it would end up in your hands! Jesus fuck, I know you hate giving up, but this is taking it overboard. You need to move on, Ray. You need to know when to-”

“Why the _hell_ do you even care, Joel?” Ray snaps before Joel can say it again. “Huh? Why don't you explain _that_ to me some more, because as far as I know I'm not any of your fucking business!”

“I know that, but that doesn't mean...” Joel trails off with an unintelligible sound and turns around to lean over the sink. His shoulders slump and his head hangs low as his energy drains. “This thing isn't natural, Ray. People aren't supposed to be able to travel back in time, aren't supposed to change shit even if they want to. You don't think anything's happened, but I've only done it five times and I can't even _begin_ to explain how much it's fucking me up. I tracked you down and followed you back for answers, and I came back again when I saw what you were doing. I thought I could help.”

They were getting ready to scream less than two minutes ago, but Joel's voice now is hardly more than a whisper. Whatever plan for this argument he had seems to slip and break away entirely with his energy as he pulls his stone out of his pocket. Joel squints at it in the kitchen light and then sets it down on the island counter.

“But I guess that's not how thing are going to work anymore,” he sighs.

This is the last time I'm gonna try, he'd said.

“What are you doing?” Ray asks as Joel rummages through cabinets and drawers, taking out knives and spatulas and then putting them back with a shake of his head.

Joel doesn't answer until he pulls out the largest knife he has and examines its handle. “It's doing shit to your mind and you're not even living anymore.”

“What are you doing?” Ray repeats, eyes narrowing.

“You're not my problem, Ray.” Joel says, eyes locked with Ray's as he returns to the counter and positions the butt of the knife over the pendant. Ray's heart skips a beat. “And according to you, you never were. I'm moving on.”

Joel raises the knife and Ray lurches forward, shouts, “No!” as he tries to cross the entire room in one go.

But the knife comes down and the piece of the pendant that Joel picked up five times ago shatters like it was nothing more than glass. Ray stops dead and stares at Joel, horrified. Joel just closes his eyes and sweeps the dusty fragments off the edge.

“Why did you do that?” Ray asks, his voice hoarse. He raises his voice. “You shouldn't have done that!”

“Then why don't you go back and change it?” Joel asks, his tone like ice. “Go on, since you're so keen on making it all perfect.”

Ray curls his fingers against his palm so tight it hurts. “It doesn't work like that, you don't-”

“You know what, maybe you're right,” Joel cuts in. “Maybe I _don't_ know and now I never will. But it's done now. If you think you can still change it, then maybe you should go ahead and try. We'll see how well it works this time, because if it isn't going to be _you_ , then _somebody_ has to stay back for the funeral of the one that _didn't matter to you_.”

How dare you, Ray wants to tell him, how do you fucking dare? But his throat has closed up and he might as well be trying to pull a block of cheese through a key hole.

Instead, he backs away from the counter and says, “Fuck you, Joel. Fuck you.”

Joel just nods, closing his eyes again and keeping them shut. “I'm sorry,” he says.

Sorry.

For the second time, Ray turns his back and storms out of Joel's kitchen. Joel doesn't say anymore and Ray doesn't look back to check. He leaves.

It isn't important now. Just one less piece that doesn't matter anymore on the kitchen floor.

The one that didn't matter to you. Fuck that. Ray can't imagine the future of anything without Gavin and his ideas and laugh and accidents. He can't. He matters too much.

He matters now, he mattered the last time, the time before that, and the time before that. Or else none of this would be happening.

Ray runs and ignores the returning pain in his abdomen. Joel isn't able to go back again, but Ray doesn't need him to. There's no point.

–

Joel's voice, before and after he broke the stone, stick in his mind in the morning. The tight feeling in Ray's chest, the thing he'd forced down and told himself he'd killed comes back. Ray tries to push it away and think about something else, but it's Friday and it's all he can think about.

Ray makes sure he has his and Gavin's lunch tightly in hand when they head to work this time, just in case. Joel arrives later than he did before, though, and he doesn't cross paths with Ray. He comes into the AH office a couple times, but only to bug Jack. Ray interacts with him for the sake of keeping up appearances. Never mind the conflict Ray feels between wanting to prove Joel wrong and the doubt that he'll be able to this time. If he fails again and goes back, the Joel there won't be the one that would make the decision to work at the office.

And then it won't matter anymore.

But Ray almost wants to channel some of Michael's rage quit energy when those words come back again and again throughout the day. He manages to keep everything on his desk and in one piece, though, and saves the energy to put it into something else – totally obliterating Team Gents in their GTA V recording and refusing Geoff's offer for a ride home later. Gotta walk it off, he tells himself. It'll be fine. _This_ time won't stop at 'close' like the last. _This_ time, he'll prove that it isn't too late. And if not, he'll just have to wait until the day he does and live with the satisfaction then.

–

“You're entire body is as hard as a brick wall. And not even in a _good_ way.”

Ray rubs the back of his neck as Gavin pokes his shoulders all over. Ray tries to work out some of the stiffness, but judging by Gavin's reaction there isn't much of a change. “Guess it's just been one of those days.”

“I see you found your necklace, though,” Gavin comments. He slides off the bed to close the blinds and block out the orange street lights and other distractions outside. He prods Ray's spine when he comes back. “There's something for your Friday night.”

“And the dinner doesn't count for shit?” Ray smiles and falls back, laying across the end of the bed and forcing Gavin to move over.

“Tell you what would count,” Gavin pauses to lean down and kiss him, “You not turning into a bloody statue over night. Sit up again.”

“Should I?” Ray asks.

He sits up anyway. No variation of this night has ever resulted in Gavin actually being able to use his hands skillfully for this purpose. But Ray lets him try, because it devolves ten minutes later into the two of them sprawled across the bed again, making out, and after that they start messing up the sheets even more. The only time that Gavin's hot hands and fine fingers on his back manage to relieve the tension is when Ray is coaxing him to relax, too.

And later again, when they're showering off, Ray finds himself contemplating the number of Friday nights he's actually experienced without stress. Not many. He might consider tonight one of the ones with a smaller amount, though.

If not for the echo.

It isn't even Joel's voice anymore. He wants it to go away, but once it gets to the point of being a question, a nasty what if, rather than a statement, a firm determination, there's only one way of getting it out.

–

“Hey, Gav?”

Gavin is still awake. Ray isn't sure if that's good or not. “Hm?”

“What would you do...” Ray pauses and swallows the lump in his throat. “What would you do if you only had a few days left to live?”

Gavin yawns before he replies. He takes it the same way he takes all their hypotheticals. “Do I know that I only have a few days left, or is it just bam, I'm dead?”

Ray opens his mouth to say, “You know,” but it won't come. “Nope, you could be walking around one day and then all of a sudden, bam, you're dead.”

“Hm... Wouldn't I just have to do whatever I planned to do? Unless there was some way to stop it, but that would mean that I _wouldn't_ have a few days left to live.”

Ray nods. He feels the muscles in Gavin's back shift as he moves his arm.

“But if I did know, I imagine I'd – mm, maybe not.” Gavin drops his arm.

“Maybe not what?”

“I was going to say that I'd still try to stop it, but the question was if I only had a few days left to live. Are those days absolute?”

Absolute. Fixed.

“Yeah,” Ray whispers. “Yeah, no way around it, I guess.”

“Then, I guess...” Gavin shrugs. “We can't really do _anything_ , then. If we knew our life would be over in a few days, no exceptions, we wouldn't really have much of a choice. We'd just have to live.”

“What if you could travel in time?”

“Uh... would that change it? Like, could I go back so far that it wouldn't matter, or forward past the date, or is that amount of time just going to stick to me?”

“I guess the – I guess it would just stay the same.”

“But then I'd just have the same amount of time, I'd still die.”

“Guess you're right,” Ray murmurs. “We'd just have to live.”

Live. Walk along until bam, they're dead. That's what it's been, hasn't it...

Gavin yawns again and falls asleep a few moments later. Ray lies awake for longer, his eyelashes brushing the back of Gavin's neck with every blink until he finally drifts off for good.

–

In the washroom the next morning, he stands in front of the mirror and stares at himself, watches his reflection lift the cord over his head, wrap it up and slip the pendant in his pocket.

–

And that night, he stands in front of the mirror again and closes his eyes as he puts it back on. This is his chance.

–

They spend the morning in, but then Gavin takes the initiative. “Giant waffles for lunch” is all Ray hears before he's carted out of his apartment and into a car with Geoff. The five minute drive is uneventful, mostly because Geoff is still sober, but Ray keeps an eye on the streets out Gavin's window anyway.

When they're in the Ramsey's kitchen, everyone attempts to help Geoff at one point to prepare the waffles, but he chases them all out of the kitchen with a stirring spoon.

“This is a stress free day,” he declares from the doorway. “So you all stay here and leave my kitchen in peace.”

Afterward, Gavin stretches himself out over the couch and pulls Ray into a Peggle tournament with Griffon, and Ray gets a hunch about where the whole “stress free” thing came from. He appreciates the sentiment, so he makes sure to thank Gavin quietly while Griffon's cheering for her win after the first round.

Later, Griffon and Gavin try to make Geoff a waffle, but Ray helps Geoff pull them back out of the kitchen when they almost set the waffle maker on fire. Ray pretends that his skin doesn't go cold when he hears the shrieks and the fire alarm, even when the shouts turn into laughs.

Aside from that, as Geoff said, it is a stress free lunch. It's the trip to Gavin's apartment that goes downhill. They stop at Ray's building because Gavin forgot his wallet, and Ray makes up an excuse as to why he should go in, too – “Pants,” is all he says, actually – and they get back in the car in under five minutes. Then they turn around and head for Gavin's, and Geoff could have twenty eyes in his head and he still wouldn't be watching the roads and mirrors as closely as Ray does.

Which might be why Ray is the first one to notice, two seconds before it happens, that they are about to get t-boned.

He shouts and pulls Gavin away from his window while Geoff smashes his foot down on the pedals, but that doesn't stop the earsplitting screech and the impact that forces Geoff's car to skid across the intersection. It's never _not_ disorienting, so it takes Ray a moment to realize what exactly happened, other than the fucking pickup running a red.

His whole right side hurts, but it's nothing compared to Gavin's left, because the left side of the car is the one that got bent in. The door on Gavin's is wrecked and pressed against a pole, the window smashed. As soon as Ray can get his hand moving again he undoes his seat belt and reaches over the seats. There are people shouting on the road and he hopes that somebody's already called for help.

“Gavin.” Ray shakes Gavin's shoulder with one hand, gets his belt off with the other. “Gav, say something.”

Geoff groans, pulling away from the airbag. “Fuck, what-”

“Gavin, wake up-”

“Is he stuck?”

Ray glances at Geoff's face in the rear view, the blood dripping down the side of his face. “He's unconscious, I-”

“You gotta get him out,” Geoff growls, wincing. “I think I'm fucking stuck. Get him out, Ray-”

“I am!”

Ray's arms are tingling and numbing a bit, but he manages to pull Gavin away from the broken window with little difficulty. He pauses to open his door as far as he can, and it's all he can do to prevent himself and Gavin from just falling out onto the road.

Please be breathing, please be alive...

Gavin's eyes stay closed. Blood is spread across his face and glass stuck in his skin, and Ray removes as much as he can with shaking hands. Ray calls his name and tries to feel him breathe, feel a pulse, but he's trembling too much. That's it. He's shaking, can't get a true tell. He just has to breathe, hold still and –

“No, no, come on, Gav,” Ray urges. “Come on, open your eyes. You can't...”

There are sirens and more authoritative voice cutting through the noise, telling people to stand back. They came quick, Ray notices faintly. But, damn it, not quick enough. Gavin isn't breathing. His blood is everywhere, staining the ground again. Ray squeezes his eyes shut and wipes away the wetness. He fucked it up again.

This time is the same as the last.

Ray ignores all the pain in his body and stands up, wordless. He feels the stone against his chest. He has to go. Again, he has to – has to, for Gavin –

On the ground, Gavin's eyes are closed and his face is void of any expression, so empty and wrong when he should be full of life and light. He should be _alive_. Ray chokes and comes back down to his knees, reaching for Gavin to pull him close.

“Damn it,” he sobs into Gavin's still chest. “Damn it, damn it!”

He can't, why can't he -

I love you, he thinks, desperate. He came back because he loves Gavin, he does, because Gavin matters to him. And he...

He clutches the pendant under his shirt, presses its points into his skin with a mantra in his head of _I should go back, I should go back_. So why doesn't he?

Please let it go, says a voice in response. Please, please, let me go.

He holds on even tighter to Gavin and cries until something pries him away. A crowbar or a strong paramedic, it doesn't matter.

One more, just one more.

We'd just have to live, he says.

Live. Please.

 

**4: Let the Lights Drop**

 

He gets out of the hospital with bruises up and down one side of his body from being thrown against the door. Geoff only has a broken arm, but has to be in a wheelchair anyway because of the bruising on his legs. They're both given a week off work, no argument. After that, whatever time they take depends on the extent of their grief.

The funeral is Wednesday. Ray debates on not going, because he's not sure if he can even get through it, let alone make it past the burial in the evening. He still has the pendant, tucked away in his pocket all the time so that he can hold onto it without looking like a fool, but he doesn't let it take it him back. Or maybe he tries and _it_ doesn't let _him_. Or maybe...

Wednesday is sunny. Only wisps in the sky and a temperature on the rise again. It should rain. It should fucking rain so that he can have one less thing be be angry at. He glowers at the sun, but it stays where it is.

“Who the hell do you think you are?” he asks it. He gets nothing.

Ray has one suit. Something he only took out when Gavin wore his. He downs a few painkillers for his arm and pulls the suit out, wears it. He goes to the funeral.

It's quiet and loud. Gavin was annoying, but only liars would say that he wasn't loved. The people that could make it in the span of two days come, so the volume of the murmurs and the sniffs and the apologies and sympathies gets louder with every person that walks in. It's a quiet occasion, but it's loud as hell. Ray surveys the scene repeatedly and after he decides that he's stuck around long enough, he tells Griffon that he's taking a walk and she lets him slips away.

It's hot outside, but what better place is there to wallow in his grief than a graveyard? Rows of headstones, some crumbling and some new, a whole lot of corpses six feet under – it's easy to get acquainted with the dead here. Why not start early? It's quiet and everyone else is going to be inside for a while. There's no one to disturb him. Almost.

“Ray?”

This is the first time he's seen Joel since Thursday. He's in a suit, too, and he has the face of someone who, while they're not quite perfect at it, is doing a hell of a lot better than Ray at hiding their pain.

“What?” Ray asks, turning around and continuing his stroll.

Joel follows him. “Any idea how long you're going to be our here?”

“No.” But if he says he doesn't want to go back in, who's going to judge him? Of all people, it better not be Joel. “Be as long as I want to, though, I imagine.”

If Joel finds his surly tone offensive, he doesn't say so. “I'm not going to ask if you're okay, because clearly you're not.”

“Clearly you don't need glasses.”

That just slipped out. Joel seems to pause briefly.

“You're still here,” he points out. “Not here in this yard, but... _Here_ , here.”

“Yeah, I am. I...” Ray swallows. He has no idea what he wants to say, if he wants to tell Joel anything or not. “I couldn't. It won't let me.”

“It _won't –_ you still have it? As in with you?”

Ray nods. His voice is going hoarse. “I haven't done anything with it.” He touches his collar before he remembers that the pendant is in his pocket now. “I don't know what to do with it.”

“What _can_ you do with it?”

“I don't know. Can't I just hold onto it? It was supposed to be some dumb trinket, can't I hold onto that?”

“I can't tell you the answer to that.”

“It's just a stupid rock,” Ray mumbles. He stops near the end of the row and presses his fingers over the shape in his pocket.

“That doesn't tell me much.” Joel stays behind him.

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe not to you, but if you're ever willing to humor me, I'm curious. You wore a giant 'NO' on your face for a time equivalent to years, yet you're still here and he's – well, not.”

“What more do you want?” Ray hisses. “I'm here, you're here and _he's not_. Does it fucking matter _why_?”

“Considering you still have that thing, when it's gone way past the point of being some sentimental rock, it kind of does.”

“It can't just go back to being a sentimental rock?”

“Not when it's probably always going to be able to do what it can do. I think you know that, Ray.”

“I know it,” Ray sighs, wishing that he could go back to his quiet walk. “It just doesn't matter to me.”

“Is that why you're still here?”

“What do you want me to fucking _say_?” Ray demands, finally turning around. Joel seems taken aback at his outburst. “Do you want me to talk about how many time I fucking _wish_ I could go back again, even though it's been _days_? Do you want to – to go on about how goddamn useless this thing is, how useless _I_ am?”

“No,” Joel shakes his head. “No, that's not what I was – oh, my God... I just don't understand, Ray. I don't, because if you want to go back, then why is it that you-”

Ray reaches out and grabs the front of Joel's jacket, shaking it. “Because _you were right!_ ” he cries. “Because he _mattered to me!_ Because I...” he lets go and tries to wipe away his tears. “I just wanted to – but I couldn't, nothing worked, I couldn't do it and he was...”

He staggers back when Joel tries to approach. Ray turns again, tries to look anywhere but at Joel or the headstones. All he finds is the goddamn blue sky and there's aren't even any clouds left in it. Just the sun that couldn't cover itself up even for today.

“Who do you think you are?” he chokes out. He turns once more, digs the pendant out of his pocket, swings his fist up and back and throws as hard as he can, shouting, “Who the hell do you think you are!”

The stone flashes in the light and lands somewhere on the other side of the graveyard. Joel ducks to avoid it and gives Ray a look mixed with concern and incredulity. When Ray goes to his knees, not even bothering with control anymore, Joel comes down, too. He ignores Ray's attempt to lean back and hugs him.

“I'm sorry,” Joel says. The amount of sincerity is almost painful. “I am sorry, Ray.”

And Ray doesn't even know what Joel has to apologize for, really, but now that he's started bawling there's no point in trying to keep control. They kneel in the grass at the edge of a graveyard, getting grass stains on their knees and tears on Joel's jacket, and they don't give a fuck anymore.

Geoff is the one that comes out in his wheelchair to get them.

“Can you hold it together?” he asks Ray. He offers the quiet of Griffon's truck, but Ray refuses. He can last it.

They go back in and Joel disappears. Ray doesn't actually notice at first, but then the casket is being carried out to the hole they prepared and Ray isn't actually sure if he _can_ keep it together. He wants to know where Joel went, because Joel knows. Joel knows it all.

Then Joel is back, brushing Ray's arm as he appears and stands silently next to Ray. He doesn't speak until Ray finally takes Griffon's keys and goes to sit in the truck. Joel follows him and asks him to wait before he shuts the passenger door.

“You need to break this,” he says, taking Ray's hand and pressing the cool stone into his palm.

Ray glances at it, then locks his gaze with Joel's. They keep the contact as Ray slides back out of the truck, takes two steps back, brings his arm back and lobs the stone at the funeral home. They don't see it, but they hear the tiny sound of it shattering against the wall. Probably not what Joel was thinking, but nevertheless...

“Done.” Ray says. He climbs back in and Joel turns and heads back into the building.

Ray doesn't cry, but he does mourn the loss of that small weight as he waits for the Ramsey's. He contemplates what would happen if he collected all the pieces and put them together again.

Griffon drops him off at his apartment at his insistence and he undresses at a record speed. He's fucking exhausted, and tomorrow they still have to finish cleaning out Gavin's apartment. He's not looking forward to it, but it's gotta be done, and he decides that the more sleep he gets, the more energy he'll have saved up for it.

On Thursday, Griffon doesn't ask why he locks himself in Gavin's bathroom – in the _apartment's_ bathroom. She takes a few things to storage and the by time she returns, Ray is back to work. She tells him not to apologize and she doesn't mention how he sneaks a few of Gavin's things into the box filled with all the stuff he left here.

He doesn't need hair gel for shit, but why let something go to waste?

When he gets home, he empties the one box he took and puts it all away. He tries to take a nap again, but he's too edgy. Something tells him it's going to get worse. He ends up calling Joel and buying a bunch of small indie games on the Xbox to play until two in the morning, though Joel only stays up until midnight. He must have gotten some something right then, because it's easier to fall asleep after that.

Ray takes a lot of naps. There's another conversation with Joel somewhere between them, but he forgets it after he wakes up afterward. The weekend comes and his body moves like a rusty machine that isn't correctly obeying all the orders it's given right away. He shakes it off at first, attributing it to his injuries, but then Sunday comes.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday...

He wakes up in a cold sweat and throws himself off his bed. He doesn't know if he ate breakfast this morning or if he even left his room at all, but what he does know is that the pendant is _gone_. He's fucking lost it and now his heart is pounding. He needs to find it, needs to make sure he can still get back if everything goes to shit _again_.

Where is it, where the fuck did it go, how the -

In his panic to find it, he flies out to the living room and slams into Joel. Ray stumbles back, but Joel catches him, asks him what's wrong with such a tone that Ray just has to stop and stare at him.

“How...” Ray trails off, brow furrowing. “How did you get in here?”

“You gave me a key,” Joel answers slowly. His expression goes strange, but he smooths it out quickly and gently directs Ray to the couch. “See, you were worried this might happen, Ray. Look, you gave this to me,” he pulls the key to Ray's apartment out of his pocket, “and you asked me to make sure you didn't do anything stupid. Which was some good foresight in my opinion.”

Ray blinks and lets himself be sat down. “I asked you to...”

Today is Sunday. But not... that was last Sunday, he remembers. That was last week, Joel's been here since _Friday_ , the funeral – Gavin's _burial –_ was Wednesday. Gavin is...

He slumps forward and covers his face with his hands. “Goddamn it,” he chokes. “I am so fucked up, aren't I? I'm so fucked up.”

Joel sits down next to him, keeping and arm around Ray's shoulders. “You need time,” he says slowly. “Granted, probably a lot of time, but still. You gotta get used to this again. You broke that thing, remember? Broke it, it's gone. You haven't gone back.”

Haven't gone back. Destroyed the pendant. Time moved on. Ray tells himself all that again until he can breathe normally. His hands don't stop shaking for a while, though.

“You should probably take a few more days off,” Joel suggests. “Just to, you know, really reacquaint yourself with the normal passage of time.”

Ray sighs. “I don't want anyone to think I'm-”

“Think you're what? Weak? Sad? I get hiding the time traveling, but people will understand that you're mourning.”

“Geoff's going back to work.”

“Geoff didn't spend seven years in a loop. Look, I'm not going to try and play psychiatrist right now, but I'm still going to do my best to stop you from being an idiot right now. Take more time off.”

Ray sits back. “Fine.”

“Good. Sit there, I'm making lunch.” Joel stands up and crosses the room to the kitchenette.

Ray listens to him puttering around there and it's sheer luck that he doesn't fall asleep again. Nope. He and Joel end up eating pancakes for lunch and then play more indie games until it gets late, at which point Ray finally heads back to bed and Joel falls asleep on the couch.

He leaves the next morning, but Ray takes his advice. He takes exactly two more days to convince himself that he can hold out and goes back to work.

–

The announcer in his head wakes him up again at the end of the weekend, but all he has to do this time is roll over, fall out of the bed and knock his head against the nightstand to remember that it's not _that_ Sunday anymore. He covers his face and hyperventilates for the twenty seconds it takes Joel to come find him on the floor.

It's going to take some getting used to, he's been told. On one hand, Gavin is still fucking dead. On the other, time is a straight line regardless of whatever nightmare he sees. Or, for that matter, how twitchy Joel gets.

Ray only notices that when his Xbox decides it needs an update and Joel gets up to pace the apartment while they wait. His limbs do the same things Ray's do – legs tensing as if preparing for a landing, arms ready snap out and grab onto something to retain balance after said landing.

He only did it five times, he'd said. And he couldn't begin to explain how it was fucking him up.

Well, they're both screwed now.

–

Geoff gets out of the wheelchair after a week and a half and gets a cane. Ray just takes smaller doses of pain medication. He also works out a schedule with Joel – he can handle weekdays, but the weekends fuck with him. To help remedy that, Joel comes on Friday and stays until Monday morning.

Ray also goes with the Ramseys to see a grief counselor a few times. Gavin was a son to them and nobody can begin to explain how hard Ray was hit, even if he hides the bulk of it. The first visit is awkward and feels completely useless, but then Ray figures out how to say what he needs to say without mixing up love, obsession and time travel (he doesn't say anything about the latter two, of course). It all makes him wonder if it'll take seven years – seven _real_ years – before anything's normal again.

He discusses it with Joel, but it gets them nowhere. Of course it wouldn't. Joel only wasted five weeks.

But he supposes that the months aren't so difficult when he's not on his own.

And it does take months. It takes hours of working through the impulses to reach up and go back, and then even more hours of sitting on the floor, alternating between being pissed off that he gave up his chance to sit on the fucking floor and then hugging it out. Moving on, Joel tells him. Gotta let it go. Hours of getting through the moments of doubt that make Joel go steely and tell Ray no.

“Hell if I'm going to let you do something like get wasted on Sunday just to avoid it all,” Joel mutters after one particular slip.

It takes days and weeks to readjust to the fact that one week doesn't pass in the same pattern as the last, or the one before that. Ray spends days reminding himself that being angry at Joel is stupid, because Joel isn't at fault. He spends days remembering what Gavin said when he thought Ray was asking him a stupid hypothetical question.

It takes months before Ray allows himself to admit that they have made progress. Slowly, yes. But they get somewhere.

–

If anybody had told him before that his recovery process would involve baking, he probably wouldn't have believed them. But he and Joel are standing in his kitchen with a recipe on Joel's phone and a counter covered in ingredients, and this is the fourth time it's happened. They don't say it, but somehow it helps.

“I think...” Joel trials off as he stirs batter. He pauses to shake his hand out and then continues slowly. “I think someone should know.”

Ray hesitates in the middle of buttering the cake pan. Tell someone. He heard that right, didn't he? Cautiously, he asks, “Who do you have in mind?”

Joel answers as though he's only making polite conversation. “Geoff.”

“You want me to tell Geoff about the fact that you traveled back in time five times and I went back who the hell knows how many times?”

“I think it would be easier to handle. Not that we haven't made progress, but I think it would help.”

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Ray says sardonically. “Hey, Geoff, just want to let you know that I saw Gavin die more than a hundred times and I'm not even talking about nightmares. _That's_ a whole other fucking can of worms. No, man, I was a goddamn time traveler. Yeah, that's going to go over so well.”

“See?” Joel points at him with his spoon. “This is what I'm talking about. You are attacking me again.”

“I'm not attacking _you_ , I'm-” Ray closes his eyes and breathes slowly. Joel waits patiently. “It's been almost, what, six months? Why are you bringing this up now?”

Six months, and Joel still stays over on weekends because Ray has the same tremors he does and because Ray still has moments of utter panic on Sundays, where the only thing he can do is lie on the floor and think about bad he failed after he remembers that he can't go back.

“I know it's been a while,” Joel says softly. “And it's probably going to be a lot longer – hell, maybe you'll never stop having nightmares and we'll always have those ticks coming back from time to time. But I don't think it's going to get any easier if we're the only ones who know.”

Two people facing the same problem on their own can only go so far is what Ray gets out of that.

“I know that.” Ray slides his pan away and faces Joel. “What if he blames me, though? If he knows how many times I tried before I decided to give up – you don't know how he's going to react to that.”

“You don't, either. We gotta live with what we get, though. I know you can do it, Ray. We've been moving forward this whole time and we need to keep doing that. Think about it.”

Joel goes back to stirring the batter. Ray stares at the cake pan and thinks about it. Five minutes later, Joel asks for food coloring and Ray passes it over. Another couple minutes go and he passes the cake pan over. Joel hands it back and asks Ray to hold onto it while he pours the batter in.

We're making a vanilla cake in purple, is the first thought that breaks through the dark things Ray imagines. They're running out of coloring because of shit like this. But it's... progress.

Joel has to ask if he's going to put it in the oven twice before Ray snaps out of it. Ray looks up at him and swallows.

“You're coming with me, right?” he asks. “If I tell him, you'll come? You did it, too.”

“I did.” Joel glances back at the empty bowl, a contemplative expression on his face. Like he hadn't thought about that detail before. Ray almost sighs. Joel hasn't had a panic attack – or, at least, he's never had one that he let Ray see – but he needs these weekends together the same way Ray does.

And maybe Geoff and Griffon can help them with it.

“Okay. If you're ever ready to tell someone, I'll come with you,” Joel says.

Ray offers a shaky smile and lifts the cake pan a little. “Peace offering?” Just in case shit hits the fan?

Joel blinks a couple times and takes what looks like a steadying breath to Ray. He nods. “Yeah. Peace offering.”

Ray goes to the oven and slides the pan in, keeps the inside light on so that they can stare at it while it rises. “Geoff and Griffon. We'll tell them together, all right?”

“Agreed.”

When Ray straightens up, Joel is looking into the living room, still breathing slow and deep. He's trying to predict outcomes, Ray realizes belatedly. He's an odds man.

 _This_ time was a failure. This time, though... He's trying to live.

“Hey, Joel?”

“What?” Joel turns just in time to face Ray when Ray hugs him.

“It's been really hard,” Ray sighs. “And I know it started off pretty bad, but... I am really glad that you're here.”

“Ray?”

“I'm not sure if I've ever told you that,” Ray continues. “But it's the truth. I've never thanked you for helping me see – or, remember what really mattered. Or for all this crap. But I'm glad you're here. Now hug me back before I start feeling dumber than I already do for that.”

Joel hugs him back without any more hesitation. “I'm glad, too. We'll get through it... Everyone has to move on sometime.”

Sometimes we just have to let it go and move on, Ray tells himself. He reasons with the nightmares. He tries to live.

It is going to take a long time. Maybe seven years, maybe not. But Gavin mattered and he can't go back again and forget that. It will take a lot, but he can do it. He can live.

They can move forward. They can live.


End file.
